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Wednesday, 9 October 2013

Bee and Puppycat

It makes sense. Adventure Timewas such a smash hit on the back of its pilot going viral on Youtube,
and the fandom became very interested in further works from the creative minds
behind the show, so they set up Cartoon Hangover as an online ‘TV show’ as
a ‘home for cartoons that are too weird, wild, & crazy for TV!’ What you
can read into that is that it’s aimed more directly at the older,
internet-savvy crowd of cartoon fans usually also labelled stoners. And not
without reason.

While this isn’t the first Cartoon
Hangover work I’ve seen – that would be Pen Ward’s other series, Bravest
Warrior – that one is ongoing whereas Bee and Puppycat, at least for
now, is a single two-part episode of around 10 minutes. You see, the company
behind Cartoon Hangover is Frederator Studios, a Nickelodeon partner
that basically exists to try to replicate the success of What a Cartoon!, a
cartoon pilot vehicle I detailed at length in my impressions of Whoopass Stew!
– they have created a string of ‘incubators’ in which creators are given a shot
at a hit cartoon. Their first was Oh Yeah! Cartoons, which spawned Fairly
Oddparents and My Life as a Teenage Robot, as well as giving Seth
McFarlane a start in the business, and later Random! Cartoons saw the
inception of Adventure Time, of course back then featuring Penn rather
than Finn.

The current slew, Too Cool!
Cartoons, is getting the most attention of any, in this age of streaming
and worldwide fandoms. And here is where Bee and Puppycat comes in: one
of those shorts. Arguably I should watch all 39, but the fact is Bee and
Puppycat caught my attention enough that I want to write about it on its
own.

Natasha Allegri is a figure
who played her cards right in the rise of the Internet’s Adventure Time fandom.
As a storyboarder, she put about her designs for the gender-swapped ‘Fionna and
Cake’, and the fandom were delighted – especially with the pretty boy versions
of Marceline and Princess Bubblegum. Allegri’s designs soon got incorporated into the show itself, much to the delight of the fans, and Allegri herself had
made herself known to the public. And thus, it made sense for her to be given a
chance for her own cartoon to be put into the ‘incubator’. Step forward Bee
and Puppycat.

There’s a lot of Adventure
Time here, reflecting Allegri’s work as a character designer – all the
characters except perhaps Bee wouldn’t look out of place in an episode. There’s
also the same sort of off-centre humour, with people being awkward and saying
whatever pops into their heads, doing things in roundabout ways and bizarre
riffs on pop culture.

Bee is a bit of a hapless
young woman living alone in her apartment but unable to hold down her job. Though
her character is in part defined by her ditzy crush on her neighbour Deckard,
she is actually one of the most strikingly complex and interesting female lead
characters in a cartoon that I can think of. She’s very flawed, her
irresponsibility causing problems for herself while at work and for others when
she does things like release her umbrella right into someone’s crotch, but in
the end she is also caring and likeable and certainly sympathetic. One day, she
comes across Puppycat, who definitely looks more like a cat than a puppy
despite, we’re led to believe, a dog’s tail. Puppycat helps her find temp work
in his strange alternate dimension, though she narrowly avoids incineration by
some sort of English-accented administrative ‘Assign Bot’ – voiced by Marina
Sirtis, best-known as Deanna Troi. Bee and Puppycat babysit the miserable fish
Wallace, who misses his mother and wants a story, but when Puppycat beautifully
sings the true story of his life, the hideous monster disguised as Wallace is
revealed, and Bee, despite not being able to get her mind around using her
sword as a sword, has to come to the rescue. And whatever the outcome,
it seems they’ll still be paid.

It’s hallucinogenic and
bizarre. It also resonated in particular with me because Puppycat is voiced by
the Vocaloid Oliver – that is, the production team apparently bought his
program and made him make random noises, which comes out very cute. I’d spent
hours looking for decent songs featuring Oliver (eventually only remakes of
older Vocaloid songs featuring him partnered with Len appealing to me), and
then Puppycat’s Song eclipses everything else Oliver-related in views and…well,
has its own very odd beauty. And a brilliant sense of bathos in the telling.

There seems to be a great deal
of online demand for more Bee and Puppycat and there are plenty of hints
at a wider story, not least of which being Puppycat in the Nanoha / MoeTan etc
mascot role. Well, personally I’d very much welcome it.

Additional, 16/10/13: Hmm! Bee
and Puppycat, perhaps predictably, has gone to Kickstarter to get funded.
The argument is that it can then be done without network interference and bring
something new with the female-created but not-for-small-children angle that
otherwise won’t get through in pure form. It’s probably more because this way
will get them a lot more money for less concessions. But still, it’s clearly
working – someone has already snapped up the perks for the $10,000 pledge.
Looks like we’re gonna get a whole Bee and Puppycat series to watch, and
not in the too-distant future.

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Welcome to Adziu's small corner

Welcome to my little blog, here in this small corner.
Over the years I have seen a few hundred animated series and movies, and the purpose of this blog is to house my impressions. This is not intended to be a daily blog with impressions of each episode: I write my thoughts only after viewing something complete. Several have been imported from previous blogs dating back to 2005 - as well as drawing from journals from as early as 1999!
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